Useful articles from various thermoplastic resins have been prepared from molds for many years. Injection molding provides a convenient way for preparing various articles from thermoplastic resins, particularly objects of a relatively intricate nature. In order to injection mold articles in an economic manner the mold resident cycle time should be kept to a minimum. This shorter cycle time provides a shorter resin heat period with consequently less thermal damage to the resin itself and/or less thermal promoted interaction between the resin and various additives present in the resin. In order to accomplish a release of the resin from the mold, various mold release agents have been found which provide for a release of the resin with lower ejection pressure. Such an agent should be chemically compatible with the resin as measured by the usual characteristics of the resin under normal conditions and heat treatments.
Of the thermoplastic resins which find a mold release agent useful from time to time one of the most sensitive to chemical interaction are the polycarbonates. The carbonate bond is susceptible to bond cleavage, for example, hydrolysis from the usual sources. Additionally, because of the high temperature at which extrusion and injection molding occur, it is also important to maintain the thermal stability of the composition. Consequently the mold release agent should itself be thermally stable at the normal processing conditions and also not interact with the resin under these conditions. A new class of mold release for certain thermoplastic resins and polycarbonate in particular has been discovered.